As a real American, we're a bit apprehensive about having much of our Internet info aggregated by two foreign-born, English-educated people, who are also women. Nonetheless, The Daily Beast has stuff of interest & is easy on these aging 20th century eyes.

Sarah Palin's performance in the waning days of the campaign—and especially at the Republican Governors Association conference—should put to rest the myth that her rhetorical skills are good or that they are even hers. (The base has McCain speechwriter Matthew Scully to thank for them.) As one Republican operative put it in an email to me shortly after Palin wrapped up at the RGA, "Who wrote that? Todd?" The lack of warmth other governors seemed to feel for Palin was just as surprising. Mostly confined to under the surface, the annoyance briefly crackled into view at the end of her bizarre presser, when Texas Governor Rick Perry overruled Palin's decision to end the event by calling on CNN's Dana Bash himself. Other than that, the governors and attendees kept criticism of Palin—which, to be fair, might stem somewhat from jealousy—off the record. One elected official, asked if he might have conducted himself differently had he gotten the VP pick, simply rolled his eyes, adding, sarcastically: "Oh, maybe."

"It's kind of a blank slate," said one conference attendee. "We could do anything." In fact, this observer believes the party has to groom new personalities BEFORE it gets to the business of figuring out its new message or its new agenda: "How do you get people to listen to a message if you don't have a messenger?" As for who the new messengers might be, one consultant at the conference, Patrick Ruffini, emphasized quantity over quality: "We need five or six Sarah Palins and five or six Bobby Jindals," he said, explaining: "The media is going to tear them down as fast as we can build them up. If we send enough of them out, some will be left standing" by 2012.

Jee-zis. The chance of another election in which a "message" or issue is actually discussed again in our life is zero. Only "messengers" having at each other in that mealy-mouthed "My opponent is a good person, but," way they have, even as all others involved in the campaigns are in attack mode, & the media is tearing down anyone offered before them.

The American Taliban seems to be on the "war path." But the New York Post's Page Six thinks it's the other way around.

MIKE Huckabee will have gays on the war path when his new book, "Do the Right Thing," hits stores next week. "[Heterosexual] marriage matters . . . nothing in our society matters more," writes the ex-Arkansas governor, whom some see as the GOP front-runner to take on Barack Obama in 2012. "Our true strength doesn't come from our military or our gross national product; it comes from our families. What's the point of keeping the terrorists at bay in the Middle East if we can't keep decline and decadence at bay here at home?"

Yeah, there's a good reason to bring the troops home. Putting the queers, adulterers & divorced into re-education camps, perhaps?

The hell w/ the bourgeois corporate drones of The Root.
Real people of color are well aware that Obama is a lackey of evil interests.

Assuming that the corporate Wall Street elite and its concomitant opinion-forming, omission, and misinformation machinery of the U.S. corporate media successfully installs their favorite choice - Democratic Party Republicrat Barack Obama - as the first colored President of the U.S. Empire, the majority of people in the United States are in for a rude awakening in the form of increased economic austerity, internal political repression, deepened racial disharmony, external U.S. military adventurism, and an endless stream of misleading disinformation from the corporate government. The peoples of the world will face intensified imperialistic and military assault and attempts at U.S. hegemony.
This time, however, the imperialism of the U.S. Empire will be conveniently spearheaded, condoned and rationalized by its newest and most potent weapon: the dangerously double-talking “Emperor” in black face - Barack Obama. Moreover, in one fell and foul swoop, the corporate/military elite of the U.S. Empire intends to utilize Barack Obama as the “messiah” (created by none other than corporate America and its corporate media) to neutralize and destroy the ongoing Black liberation struggle for justice and equality in this nation, and in people’s liberation struggles throughout the world.

...the corporate media’s intense disinformation campaign and biased and overwhelming support for Barack Obama was initially, simply too potent, for the majority of people to see through or recognize how they were being manipulated, pimped, and bamboozled. But with renewed vigilance, over time that will change. It must also be remembered that liberation struggles for economic, social, and political justice, nationally and internationally, are long term dialectical affairs and they will not only continue, but in the course of time, become stronger.

Never forget. We only do the groundwork for real, lasting social change.

Thirty yrs. since "Jonestown." Maybe we should not use that name at all, or maybe we should never forget it. Jim Jones. A real "All-American" name.It's been thirty yrs. for the woman who talks here.
MSNBC, having exclusive footage which only cost NBC News a reporter & a camera operator, has been working up to the anniversary for some time, & now features this AP story.
If for nothing else, we should remember it for the phrase "Drink the Kool-Aid," which wasn't what was actually consumed, but we suppose the Yankee mind is too limited to grasp anything w/o a price on it.A perhaps deeper look at The People's Temple & other "suicide cults," from Salon.

As an outside agitator ("Give Guns to The Queers!") we're interested in stirring up trouble. Nothing better for that than facts.

"As is the case with Great Britain, Israel, and other nations that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, our service members are professionals who are able to work together effectively despite differences in race, gender, religion, and sexuality," the officers wrote.[...]
Retired Adm. Charles Larson, a four-star admiral and two-time superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy who signed the statement with 104 other retired admirals and generals, said in an interview that he believed Clinton's approach was flawed because he rushed to change military culture.
[...]
The list of 104 former officers who signed the statement appears to signal growing support for resolving the status of gays in the military. Last year, 28 former generals and admirals signed a similar statement.

Progress is inevitable; it just takes two eternities & feels like one's teeth are being pulled most of the time.

The "Magical Negro" concept has always cracked us up. (As does "Negro Spirit Guide.") And we barely qualify as a Norman Mailer "white negro," let alone a "wigger."
How do people who might really fucking know think about it & Pres.-Elect Obama?They think everyone should just follow along.

Now, thanks to the coarsening effect of the Internet on political discourse, the magazine may have lost something else: its reputation as the cradle for conservative intellectuals and home for erudite and well-mannered debate prized by its founder, the late William F. Buckley Jr.

May we add that Just Another Blog (From L. A.) does so much more than its share to coarsen the political discourse that we're waiting for some (any) kind of award.
And might we assume that the print & on-line portions of the vast NR empire are not too happy w/ each other?

National Review, as the most pedigreed voice of conservatives, has often been tainted — unfairly and by association, some argue — by the tone of blogs, reader comments and e-mail messages. “Bill was always very concerned about having a high-minded and thoughtful discourse,” Rich Lowry, the magazine’s editor, said. “If you read the magazine, that’s what it was and that’s what it is.”

An admission of intellectual bankruptcy:

Wick Allison, publisher of the magazine from 1990 to 1993, believes that over the last several years the magazine became “the intellectual defender of the Bush administration” and said it had “run out of ideas.”

Gee, how did that happen? How could they run out of so many ideas so soon?
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum's exit from the magazine is the starting point for the NYT story. Here's what Frum has to say:

“I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated,” he said.

But putting clear blue water between moderate Republicanism and the religious right would undoubtedly give rise to a third party, a breakaway Christian Party. Such parties are familiar in American history, most recently in 1968 with George Wallace’s American Independent Party, and going back through Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace in 1948.
Our Third Evangelical Awakening, which has lodged itself in the Republican party, will eventually begin to fall asleep, as did the two previous Awakenings, only more rapidly this time because of the spread of education and accelerated methods of communication.

The author, a professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College, wrote for the National Review for more than three decades, where he was senior editor, & wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan, when governor of California, and for Richard Nixon.

Nor is he of the opinion that the split will necessarily be bad for the remaining Republicans. As long as America's junior Taliban is marginalized in their own party, we may be able to tolerate "Eisenhower" Republicans for a while. Although their insane desire to return to the '50s, whether through Ike, sexual repression or Jim Crow gets sillier & sillier the farther we move from that imagined Golden Age.

Brought to our attention by this blogspot, more rabid weasels in the secession vein as well:

Now that we have “un-muddied” the water…..we stand on the edge of a caldera with no idea of the complexity, depth, explosiveness, or unpredictability of this phenomenon we have witnessed in the rise of Barack Obama! We as a country have never actually been here before, standing at the edge of possible dissolution of our country, except perhaps in the election of 1860. One realizes at once the perils of both diving into that hot pool of water, or running away to avoid the explosion….either scenario leads to serious burns!

Sure, it seems to be from Texas, but this would be venturing farther than usual into the absurd. B. O.'s been the Pres.-Elect for two wks. and This Great Nation of Ours is closer to dissolution than any time since 1860?

We just can't wait until President Obama is running things. These people's heads will explode. Maybe we'll get Jesusland to secede. They'll be so angry when...Oops! We also keep forgetting that nothing that will really bug the righties is going to happen under President Obama.

Not just the AP but now more wimpy liberal elitists from the Northeast are all over a few hotheads letting off some steam after a long drawn-out campaign. Just like the AP story, it's a reaction to the Southern Poverty Law Center mongering a bit of fear, in the grand American style.

"Most of this movement is not violent, but there is a substantive underbelly that is violent and does try to make a bridge to people who feel disenfranchised," says Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. "The question is: Will this swirl become a tornado or just an ill wind? We're not there yet, but there's dust on the horizon, a swirling of wind, and the atmospherics are getting put together for [conflict]."

Poetry is where one finds it.

The CSM does get a bit farther into the story than the AP did, w/ the poetic academic (from San Ber'doo, yet) & this bit of apocalyptica.

But for nonviolent secessionist groups like the League of the South, the hope is for a more vigorous debate about the direction of the US and the South's role in it, says Michael Tuggle, a League blogger in North Carolina.

Mr. Tuggle says his group isn't looking for an 1860-style secession but, rather, a model that Spain, for one, is moving toward, in which "there's a great deal of autonomy for constituent regions" – a foil to what is seen as unchecked, dangerous federal power in Washington.

"To a lot of people, the idea of secession doesn't seem so crazy anymore," says Tuggle. "People are talking about how left out they feel, ... and they feel that something strange and radical has taken over our country."

Today in History - Nov. 17

By The Associated Press
Today is Monday, Nov. 17, the 322nd day of 2008. There are 44 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On Nov. 17, 1968, the NBC television network outraged football fans by cutting away from the closing minutes of a New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game to begin a special presentation of "Heidi" on schedule. (Home viewers were prevented from seeing the Raiders come from behind to beat the Jets, 43-32.)
On this date:
In 1558, Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne upon the death of Queen Mary.
In 1800, Congress held its first session in Washington in the partially completed Capitol building.
In 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt.
In 1917, sculptor Auguste Rodin died in Meudon, France, at age 77.
In 1934, Lyndon Baines Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, better known as "Lady Bird," in San Antonio, Texas.
In 1962, Washington's Dulles International Airport was dedicated by President Kennedy.
In 1970, the Soviet Union landed an unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle on the moon, the Lunokhod 1.
In 1973, President Nixon told Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, Fla.: "People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."
In 1987, a federal jury in Denver convicted two neo-Nazis and acquitted two others of civil rights violations in the 1984 slaying of radio talk show host Alan Berg.
In 1997, 62 people, most of them foreign tourists, were killed when six militants opened fire at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt; the attackers were killed by police.
Ten years ago: The public got to hear Monica Lewinsky's voice for the first time as the House Judiciary Committee released 22 hours of tape recordings secretly made by Linda Tripp. Israel's parliament overwhelmingly approved the Wye River land-for-peace accord with the Palestinians. Actress Esther Rolle died in Culver City, Calif., at age 78.
Five years ago: John Allen Muhammad was convicted of two counts of capital murder in the Washington-area sniper shootings. Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as the 38th governor of California. Rush Limbaughreturned to radio after five weeks of rehabilitation for a painkiller addiction. Texas Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez won the American League Most Valuable Player award.
One year ago: U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte delivered a blunt message to Pakistan's military ruler, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, telling him emergency rule had to be lifted and his opponents freed ahead of elections. A Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report that the Earth was hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace.
Today's Birthdays: Rock musician Gerry McGee (The Ventures) is 71. Singer Gordon Lightfoot is 70. Movie director Martin Scorsese is 66. Actress Lauren Hutton is 65. Actor-director Danny DeVito is 64. "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels is 64. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Tom Seaver is 64. Movie director Roland Joffe is 63. Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean is 60. Actor Stephen Root is 57. Rock musician Jim Babjak (The Smithereens) is 51. Actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is 50. Actor William Moses is 49. Entertainer RuPaul is 48. Actor Dylan Walsh is 45. Actress Sophie Marceau is 42. Actress-model Daisy Fuentes is 42. Rhythm-and-blues singer Ronnie DeVoe (New Edition; Bell Biv DeVoe) is 41. Rock musician Ben Wilson (Blues Traveler) is 41. Actress Leslie Bibb is 35. Actor Brandon Call is 32. Country singer Aaron Lines is 31. Actress Rachel McAdams is 30. Rock musician Isaac Hanson (Hanson) is 28. Actor Justin Cooper is 20. Actress Raquel Castro is 14.
Thought for Today: "There's one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die — their silence." — Ben Hecht, American author and screenwriter (1893-1964).

Sunday, November 16, 2008

The struggle of the Basque people against the pair of nations they're caught between (France & Spain. Imagine if those two were your neighbors.) has continued for many yrs., but a blow has been struck against these valiant freedom fighters. As a long time armchair terrorist, we are in solidarity w/ Txeroki, & demand his release immediately, or else! Really.

FDD and the Heritage Foundation will hold an event with Dr. William Graham, the chairman of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, to discuss the threat and what must be done to defend our nation.

Speaker: Dr. William R. Graham, Chairman, Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack

When: Monday, November 17, 2007 – 11:00 am to 12:00 pm

Where: Lehrman Auditorium

Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a high-intensity burst of electromagnetic energy caused by the rapid acceleration of charged politics. EMP can be a weapon of mass disruption when these particles, either through a nuclear warhead or a bomb composed of isolated EMP, spread throughout electronic infrastructure, wreaking extensive damage on our electronic systems, vastly crippling America’s recovery abilities. For instance, airplanes could literally fall from the sky, food would rot, and our medical and emergency response capabilities would be non-existent – the lives and property lost would be immense.

Join the Heritage Foundation and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies as we explore the EMP threat and discuss steps that the next Congress and the new Administration should take to protect Americans from this preventable homeland security catastrophe.

Whoo. You think you can take just a few precious moments to be relaxed, & suddenly the FDD comes up w/ something else to frighten you.

Norah Vincent, formerly down w/ the Foundation for The Defense of Democracies (so named, you know that "democracy" is the very last thing being defended; don't even mention expanding it) typed a weepy item a wk. after the election, in which she began to regret her non-vote. (Recall that few would admit to having voted for Bush/Cheney after 2004. Few in the immediate future will be admitting they voted McCain/Palin "Country First.")

Not that we care, having just wasted half an hour of a rapidly shortening life cranking out that paragraph. We're really interested in shooting Sarah Palin from an aircraft, to thin the herd. And who better to pull the trigger than Ms. Vincent?

Though I am by no means as doctrinaire as I once was about political and social matters, I'm still a libertarian fiscal conservative.

How nice for you. Do get on w/ it though, won't you?

The second reason I didn't vote for McCain is -- big surprise here -- Sarah Palin. Christopher Hitchens was right on the money when he called her a "proud, boastful ignoramus," though I would go further. She is a belligerent ignoramus. The resounding theme of her candidacy was a shamefully rabble-rousing, nauseatingly populist denunciation of knowledge, intellectual expression and reasoned debate, all apparently the vicious province of the media elite and not the hard and hardy backbone of the "real" America.
Watching her made me sick, and the thought of her ascending to the highest office in the land on the possible demise of her less-than-robust 72-year-old boss was not something I could live with. A vote for him was, in all likelihood, a vote for her, and I just couldn't do it.

Then it's on to to maybe Pres.-elect Obama isn't The Omen, Part IV, & he not only has a brain he uses it, blah blah. As if it's an amazing miracle in Presidential politics (It, of course, is.) to have a President who thinks first.

But we thank Ms. Vincent for the "belligerent ignoramus" tag. And how committed she is to defending democracy: "shamefully rabble-rousing, nauseatingly populist."

W. Virginia town shrugs at being fattest city

Huntington characterized as obese, toothless and poor in recent report

It's a sad situation, and a potential harbinger of what will happen to other U.S. communities, said Ken Thorpe, an Emory University health policy professor who is working with West Virginia officials on health reform legislation.

"They may be at the very top, but obesity and diabetes trends are very similar" in many other communities, particularly in the South, Thorpe said.

The USAF looks to be making a big propaganda move in the Southland this wk. If you wanted to examine your tax dollars at work, you've probably already missed "Wings Over Long Beach." Check here for more stuff. Then go out & drop some bombs on innocent civilians from thousands of ft. away. What a vicious people we are.Above:

A B-52 Stratofortress provides a flyby down Hollywood Boulevard on Nov. 14 and over the Hollywood and Highland Plaza in Los Angeles for the opening ceremonies of Air Force Week-Los Angeles. The ceremonies included performances by the Air Force Honor Guard Drill Team and the Air Force Band of the Golden West with flyovers by several different Air Force aircraft and interactive expos. Air Force Week-Los Angeles is Nov. 14 to 21 and has events throughout the area. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III)

Man. A shot like that (Gargantuan version here.) just makes us wish there were a few hundred carpet bombs dropping from that B-52, right on the Cathedral of Commodity Fetishism at Hollywood & Highland.

A large. frightening bald man with pointed sticks arrayed behind him had talked & talked & talked in a very loud voice, but nobody could explain what he was saying...He hoped that the man's bottle would fall off the mic thing, but it didn't. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

There were flags there, in calming blue colors. He stared at them for some time before going inside. Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke/AP

A Humvee filled with US Marines on a combat patrol through the desert near Al Asad in 2006. Iraq's cabinet has defied fiery opposition from Shiite hardliners and approved a wide-ranging military pact that includes a timetable for the withdrawal of all US troops by the end of 2011. Photo: AFP/File/Lance Cpl. James B. Hoke

This might be good. We've not actually read it, only been exposed to the advertising. Caveat emptor.

Beyond the general grousing about the unending meetings, writers also griped with a sort of doleful pride that their work for the paper was something they toiled at, in at least some far compartment of their minds, during every waking moment of their lives.

"Everything becomes fodder for humor. It's actually a terrible way to go through life," said Guterman during a cigarette break on the sidewalk on Broadway. "You never entirely leave the work. It makes it impossible to have conversations with people. Your mind is incessantly working in this mode."

No shit. Especially the "It makes it impossible to have conversations with people" part. It's no picnic going through life poking fun at anything that moves or, alternately, is too lazy to move. Or inanimate.

Story editor Todd Hanson, 39, who is the acknowledged despair specialist and the oldest writer on the staff, took a pull on a cigarette and offered a slightly different spin. "For me, comedy is essentially about personal horror, and transforming that horror into something people can laugh at."

The WaPo's Chris Cillizza exposes five election result myths. We're sure our incredibly sophisticated audience needs no reminder of what happened (nor indication of what will happen) but in case any one's getting carried away, let us pop your balloon.

1. The Republican Party suffered a death blow.
2. A wave of black voters and young people was the key to Obama's victory.
3. Now that they control the White House and Congress, Democrats will usher in a new progressive era.
4. A Republican candidate could have won the presidency this year.
5. McCain made a huge mistake in picking Sarah Palin.

Nice people in Russia. From our only source for all Russian news, Pravda. That means "Truth," right?

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was aware of Vladimir Putin’s intention “to hang him by the balls” during the armed conflict in the Caucasus in August. Saakashvili, who arrived in Paris Thursday for a meeting with his French counterpart, confirmed that he knew about the notorious conversation, which supposedly took place between Nicolas Sarkozy and Vladimir Putin.
When journalists of a French radio station read out Putin’s threat to Saakashvili, the Georgian president responded with a nervous giggle. “I knew about this scene, but not all the details. It’s funny, all the same,” The Times quoted the Georgian leader as saying.

That Putin's quite a man. Two men, almost. We can certainly see how he & Bush are similar "souls." And the Russkies (Pravda, at least) like it when he talks dirty.

Putin is known for his street language, which he may often use in his official statements. A French journalist asked Putin an unpleasant question about Chechnya in Brussels in 2002. “If you are so eager to become an Islamic radical and are prepared to get circumcised, I would recommend them to carry out the operation in a way so that nothing grows back for you,” Putin responded.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the post election glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

The LEM (That's Liberal Elite Media, not Lunar Excursion Module.) is at it again. The leftist traitors at the AP have suggested, based on a few anecdotes, that all of America's racial problems have not recently been solved.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.
There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.
[...]
Potok, who is white, said he believes there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."
Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.
"If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported," he said.

Hilarious. But what if this Grant Griffin guy means this crap? Nah. Couldn't be.
Click for the AP story, w/ a long list of stupid & hateful incidents. One wonders what might have been done to gay people had California & the other states' anti-civil rights propositions & initiatives lost, & the destruction of marriage were now officially underway.

We (& The NYT )wanted to remind all & sundry that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) a still sexist & until recently an overtly racist death-cult, may well have some sexually repressed weasel in a black necktie & short-sleeved white shirt w/ name tag peeping in your window looking for non-Creator intended activity. Just after he or she polls you.

Suggested talking points were equally precise. If initial contact indicated a prospective voter believed God created marriage, the church volunteers were instructed to emphasize that Proposition 8 would restore the definition of marriage God intended.
But if a voter indicated human beings created marriage, Script B would roll instead, emphasizing that Proposition 8 was about marriage, not about attacking gay people, and about restoring into law an earlier ban struck down by the State Supreme Court in May.

Sarcastic Move 1: Almighty Holy Gawd: Writer of Dictionaries & Contracts. The Big Bureaucrat in the Sky. Thought that bureaucracy was the enemy w/ real, Gawd-fearing Americans like these.
Or, number two: You all must remember the classic of the French cinema, And God Created Marriage, w/Brigitte Bardot? As if a reference to Froggy flicks would change any minds in this battle.
But a silver lining of sorts is found, as one of the conservatives admits.

“We could not have this as a battle between people of faith and the gays,” Mr. Schubert said. “That was a losing formula.”

They're now admitting they know they're outnumbered by decent people of all orientations & religions, so it must be, as one egghead or another phrased it, "framed" as not anti-gay. We suppose it's helpful to be a complete moron to buy into that & the "threat to marriage" part.

Oct. 28, Mr. Ashton, the grandson of the former Mormon president David O. McKay, donated $1 million. Mr. Ashton, who made his fortune as co-founder of the WordPerfect Corporation, said he was following his personal beliefs and the direction of the church.
“I think it was just our realizing that we heard a number of stories* about members of the church who had worked long hours and lobbied long and hard,” he said in a telephone interview from Orem, Utah.
In the end, Protect Marriage estimates, as much as half of the nearly $40 million raised on behalf of the measure was contributed by Mormons.
[...]
Mr. Ashton described the protests by same-sex marriage advocates as off-putting. “I think that shows colors,” Mr. Ashton said. “By their fruit, ye shall know them.”

We're not typing one word. Could be completely, albeit amazingly, ignorant.
*“I think it was just our realizing that we heard a number of stories..." Best self-description of the rightist/religionist "thought process" we've yet read.

More childish whining about Dick. (Which is not to say that we don't love it. After all, who can be more childish than Dick? Or just a dick, in our case.)

This doctrine is at best controversial and at worst utter nonsense. "The Vice Presidency," it states, "is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch." Translation: "What happens in the vice-presidential office is none of your god damned business."

Frankly, then, if you don't even know Dick, maybe you shouldn't be talking about Dick.

An eerie light (Would it be as "eerie" if it weren't from stuff that's been turned entirely to ash?) pervades the sky.
Particulate matter, not merely the ordinary automotive matter, but stuff from where the wealthy &/or "rich" (so hard to define that word these days we'll leave it in quotes) live, butt up against the forests or as close to the ocean as possible.
Here in the sunsetty Southland it's 1705ish & there's been nothing but "Firestorm '08!!!" on any of the local VHF telebision channels (Of seven, six of them of them owned & operated by the Gang of Four broadcast networks, & one owned by major - but shrinking - media empire Tribune Co., & affiliated w/ The CW) except "MYNetwork"(Huh?) Channel 13, & kudos to them for showing whatever they scheduled - something involving nuns & a young girl, perhaps Irish, judging from the Celto- music & accents, even more evil than kiddie porn for it's wholesomeness - since 1600, if not earlier. We were moving the Just Another Blog Editorial & Corporate Offices to a new (to us) spot (not even in the city of Los Angeles, in the interest of full parenthetical disclosure, & don't know when "Firestorm 08" started. The liberal elite media (and the sheep for whom they program) all love to scare & be scared, so we're betting sooner rather than later.
Look: only half an hr. later, it's totally dark. Except for the electricity, but we're only interested in nature around here.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Retail sales plunge by largest amount on record
Consumers curb spending on range of goods; falling gas prices contribute

Har har. Fuck you all, you stupid food tubes. In one end, out the other, empty inside. Your empty world of emptiness is about to become a vacuum. (We're especially hoping for a massacre of "shoppers" & consumers at Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade, where, as we type, we are sitting nursing a large coffee, though they don't call it that here, if you know what we mean, followed by an army of bulldozers shoving both the worshippers' corpses & the temples of commodity fetishism where they worshipped over the Palisades to block polluters from using the PCH. Nothing yet from the Obama Administration to be, but we're hoping for an answer soon.) We wish you only the best of luck breathing in there.
The laughter you hear is the editorial staff. The Krauts may have invented the word "schadenfreude," but we're refined the concept to a vicious, diamond-like hardness here. (If we do say so ourself.)

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Another look at douche bag cartoonists. This clown, Chuck Asay, is identified by Comics.com as having a "biblical worldview." In this panel, Chuck reiterates the biblical worldview of "Spare the rod & spoil your wife," in a display of Xian decency & kindness. Women just scare the living shit out of these losers, don't they?

Just heard Frank fucking Sinatra, dead these many yrs., singing "Let It Snow" on a recording in a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. We're in favor of destroying the entire festival of forced consumption as soon as possible. When does the gawd damn war start?
Consumption is about to become "unfashionable" anyway, because none of you unemployed losers can afford to buy shit, literally or otherwise. (Of course, virtually everything offered for sale these days is shit.)
Let's have that war!!

the next time you hear a right-wing fuckhead whine about "energy independence," meaning that we should destroy the remaining natural beauty & environment of our nation in order to assure that Big Oil can continue to profit, & to cut off the Saudi scum w/ whom we've had such a one-sided relationship for so long. Surprisingly, it only occurred to Big Oil that we might not want to be in bed w/ the diaper-heads after they attacked the continental United Snakes. And it still doesn't occur to them that burning shit for power is not the sharpest idea in the proverbial drawer.

Nor is driving everywhere surrounded by tons of steel. As indicated by this.

Study: Calif. dirty air kills more than crashes
Author says state is 'paying now' for not doing enough on pollution

Happy now, capitalist shit-burners who love funneling money to Arabs? Or would "murderers" be a more apt word?

This apotheosis has happened even though he is handicapped by, as National Review rather cruelly says, "an owlish, tight-lipped public demeanor reminiscent of George Will."

And Sen. Larry Craig. In other words, all three of 'em are gay. Not that there's anything wrong w/ being gay, except when you're such a fucking moron that you've internalized the bullshit values of this bullshit society & started hating yourself, as well as lying to others & perhaps to yourself in an effort to gain & maintain political power.
Yes, lying about getting some on the side is a horrible thing & means you're untrustworthy & shouldn't be running the country. (No it doesn't, but we're going along w/ the anti-Clinton argument for the sake of argument.) That, then, applies to Clinton, but if rabid weasels want to lie about their gayness & the conflict that they're buying into because they accept (often overaccept & fethishize, in compensation for their non-conformity) this pig society's pig values, well, that's just fine. Except that you've got a crazy, conflicted person in charge of important stuff.
Do you think the Down Syndrome or autistic (we can't remember which) child Will's defective jizz & wife (she married old owlish, tight-lipped George, she must be less than perfect herself) produced was gawd's way of punishing him for being a homo & getting married to hide it?
Added liberal egomaniac "Look at me!" whine: When will one of these twisted bastards dare to take us on? We might have to make something up about them to get their goats, as they seem scared to face us when we call them on their actual bull.

None of this is the fault of the left. After the events of the 20th century--national socialism, international socialism, inter-species socialism from Earth First--anyone who is still on the left is obviously insane and not responsible for his or her actions. No, we on the right did it. The financial crisis that is hoisting us on our own petard is only the latest (if the last) of the petard hoistings that have issued from the hindquarters of our movement. We've had nearly three decades to educate the electorate about freedom, responsibility, and the evils of collectivism, and we responded by creating a big-city-public-school-system of a learning environment.

"Anyone still on the left?" The capacity for delusion on the right is truly astounding. A clue for the ninnies: This is not a center-right country, & any time an information source manages to get out from beneath its corporate boss & tell the truth about what the "right" wants for the nation, it goes badly for the rabid weasels. The electorate, being semi-rational, isn't buying your crap any more.
Before we vomit, we're gone, but let's just see if we can stand one more of O'Rourke's paragraphs.

The real message of the conservative pro-life position is that we're in favor of living. We consider people--with a few obvious exceptions--to be assets. Liberals consider people to be nuisances. People are always needing more government resources to feed, house, and clothe them and to pick up the trash around their FEMA trailers and to make sure their self-esteem is high enough to join community organizers lobbying for more government resources.

Liberals consider people "nuisances?" Well, that explains minimum wage laws. People need gov't. resources to feed, clothe & house them? Because Wal*Mart doesn't pay a living wage or provide health insurance? By the way, Mr. O'Rourke, your consideration of people as "assets" (i. e., objects to be used up & thrown away) seems a bit odd when most of your references to people are about poor people whose parks smell bad, & so on. (Seriously: "smelly public parks." WTF? It's called nature, P. J. Or do you think that the colored people smell bad in general? Maybe the word "public" frightens him. Why, people who work for a living might be able to enjoy something close to nature, cutting into the privileges of Mr. O'Rourke's class.)
The editorial staff here would like to meet Mr. O'Rourke in a dark alley (or an entirely public place) sometime. Pretend you're a man, P. J., & show up w/o your alleged guns (chances are Mrs. O'Rourke won't allow P. J. w/in a mile of a weapon, especially after he's been drinking as he does) but we'll pretend we believe his macho fantasies. Or show up w/ a gun, for all we care. We've used guns to threaten people before, it won't be much of a problem to relieve him of his metal (or composite fiber) Viagra & threaten a poseur such as "P. J."
Final note to all "conservative, right-wing," or whatever you call yourselves pontificators:
The following cliches & platitudes

Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque?

are now off limits. Your endless bullshit usage of these words has removed what little value or meaning they once had, most of which was convincing people that they should work like dogs for shit wages, or be used as cannon fodder by the fascists that have run this country into the ground for the last 200 + yrs.
One boring hr. spent each wk. in itchy clothes at the temple of lies? Just admit it, P. J., you're a piece of self-hating crap, because at some level you do understand how horrid you are, & you want Sarah Palin to punish you. Or do you really believe that wasting an hr.'s sleep every Sunday to see & be seen at Lies Central is vital to subjugating the AmeriKKKan people? Fuckhead. Go die. Now. Before we decide to help you.

More evidence that we should have gone into Saudi Arabia & cleared out that rat's nest of religio-fascism on 12 September 2001, rather than wait a month to attack Bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Saudi King Abdullah, who initiated this week's special session, is quietly enlisting the leaders' support for a global law to punish blasphemy – a campaign championed by the 56-member Organization of Islamic Conference that puts the rights of religions ahead of individual liberties.

If the campaign succeeds, states that presume to speak in the name of religion will be able to crush religious freedom not only in their own country, but abroad.

The UN session is designed to endorse a meeting of religious leaders in Spain last summer that was the brainchild of King Abdullah and organized by the Muslim World League. That meeting resulted in a final statement counseling promotion of "respect for religions, their places of worship, and their symbols ... therefore preventing the derision of what people consider sacred."

The lofty-sounding principle is, in fact, a cleverly coded way of granting religious leaders the right to criminalize speech and activities that they deem to insult religion. Instead of promoting harmony, however, this effort will exacerbate divisions and intensify religious repression.

Oh, no, no attack against those who actually attacked us. That last part is the Bush Admin.'s standard operating procedure for political activity. Wonder where they got those ideas?

[The Saudi Government] also violates the rights of the large communities of Muslims who adhere to Islamic traditions other than the one deemed orthodox by Saudi clerics. In the past two years, dozens of Shiites have been detained for up to 30 days for holding small religious gatherings at home. One Ismaili, Hadi Al-Mutaif, is serving a life sentence after being condemned for apostasy in 1994 for a remark he made as a teenager that was deemed blasphemous. The alleged crime of apostasy, in fact, can be punished by death.

The government's policies are enforced by the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, a roving religious police force, armed with whips, that regularly oversteps its authority and is unchecked by the judiciary.

Women seeking to exercise basic freedoms of speech, movement, association, and equality before the law have experienced particularly severe abuse.

In a particularly egregious recent case, a woman was gang-raped as punishment by seven men who found her alone in a car with a man who was not her relative. She escaped the sentence of 200 lashes and six months in prison only because of a pardon by King Abdullah, yet he also said he believed the sentence was appropriate.

Holding a session on advancing interfaith dialogue abroad is a pale substitute for hosting it in the kingdom, where the message of respect for freedom of religion and belief is most needed.

Against the background of Saudi repression and the kingdom's role in exporting extremism, including through school textbooks preaching hatred of "unbelievers," the UN and every world leader attending the special session should be demanding an end to severe violations of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia.

Dialogue is no substitute for compliance with universal human rights standards.

Sure it is. Talk, talk, talk, until the original problem is forgotten. "Human rights," indeed. What next, a living wage & health insurance for all? Muslim-Marxists!!
But we shouldn't be so quick to condemn, should we? Also from the Monitor, a slightly different view. A view informed by who pays the viewer's salary. (Note: Just Another Blog [From L. A.] receives no salary from anyone, just a gummint stipend. And if you think we're scared to bite the hand that "feeds" us, just point a paw in our direction, gov't. jerks!!)

Some (from many faiths) would prefer to close rather than open minds, to deny rather than accept what we are learning about God's miraculous design of our universe, and to reject rather than acknowledge how those of different religious heritages could receive God's mercy. The process that King Abdullah has launched effectively rebuts their distorted vision.

Please explain to us, the rational, why you would worship an evil being that established a world in which you have to beg him (the "creator" thereof) for mercy. Any fair court would call this a conflict of interest & put gawd, jehovah or allah the fuck out of business. Immediately.

An idea for Ms. Gov. Palin. Don't claim you'll be keeping anyone "honest" until you stop lying like a fucking rug, you obnoxious ignoramus.

Palin noted that Congress is led by the likes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Rep. Barney Frank, and said it was incumbent upon GOP governors to ensure that the federal government doesn't take over the health care system.

We shouldn't have health care for anyone who can't afford it. Some innovative American will develop a way to self-perform surgery & manufacture Viagra in his basement & get the economy rolling again.

Speculation has centered on the telegenic Palin despite her tumultuous two months on the national political scene. She likely would have competition for a possible 2012 bid from Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — all in attendance at the three-day meeting.

Let's examine these clowns:
Barbour: Sold out to the Chicoms when he was head of the Republican National Committee or the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.
Crist: Quite possibly gay (NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG W/ THAT!!) & got "married" in case John McCain tapped him to be veep & to help in election fraud in Florida. By the way, isn't getting married to hide your sexual orientation much more threatening to "traditional" marriage than an honest homo marriage?
Pawlenty: A nobody from nowhere. Seriously, who is he & what's he ever done?
Jindal: Catholic wack-job & "exorcist."
That's quite a line-up of "leaders." Who do these people think they're kidding, anyway? There's a reason

"We are the minority party," Palin said at a session on "Looking Towards the Future: The GOP in Transition." "Let us resolve not to be the negative party."

Um, Mme. Goobernator, are you incapable of noting that you're already the party of hatred, division & negativity? And that that's why you're the minority party, & have been for yrs.? There are none so blind & stupid as those who will not see what's before their eyes.

What a fucking maroon. Can we get the lame duck Congrefs to hurry the process & throw Bushie-Boy out on his incompetent ass as soon as possible? He doesn't have to be replaced w/ Barack O. either. Put a fucking blender or toaster-oven in the office.
Look at this shit:

The president was delivering a vigorous defense of free-market capitalism and easier global trade to frame his approach to the high-level gathering he's hosting in Washington this weekend.

WASHINGTON - Applications for unemployment benefits soared to the highest level since just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks while the trade deficit shrank more than expected as demand for imports plunged, further evidence of the struggling U.S. economy.

HOW THE FUCKING HELL IS THAT "FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM" WORKING OUT FOR "REAL" AMERICANS, BUSH? HUH?
Question or Threat Dep't.: Is it a federal crime to murder the living shit out of an ex-president? Not that we care. We'd probably rather do time in a federal prison. Not that we're very likely to get a chance at Bush (either one, or those two cracker assholes from the sticks the Dems put in in '76 & '92) but that's as good a reason as any for concealed-carry laws.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

But were interrupted by Brother Brick, who, as a jazzbo & drummer, knows something about this "Mitch Mitchell/Elvin Jones" stuff.

RIP Mitch Mitchell. Jimi Hendrix's drummer. The dude wailed like nobody. Tiny little English bastard doing his best Elvin Jones. Cool. And man could he get up a shambolic shuffle. Listen to "Hey Baby"...the one from "Rainbow Bridge". Hip hippie jazzness at it's best. Wasn't another rock drummer that could play just like that. Dropping in Max Roach snare snaps and rim smacks and riffling popping toms, some heavy tom shit like Joe Morello in Take Five (remember that? Mitchell apparently dug Morello's thunder rolls) and all that Elvin that Jimi wanted--like when they come out at Monterey and light into "Killing Floor" and Mitch's rolls are so all over and so in there (or close enough) and man, it's frigging glorious. Crazy crazy rock'n'roll, man. Just like god intended it to be, if god smoked a lot of dope and didn't worry much about meter.... (Did he and Keith Moon ever play together? Can you imagine?) Nice guy, too. It was a dinner party somewhere in Silver Lake, eons ago. All these miserable guitar players wanted to play "Red House" with him, like he hadn't been there and done that like sooooooooooooooo much better.... Incredibly, he smiled and put up with them all. They raise 'em polite over there in England, apparently. When at last freed from his throne there was a dinner party inside. Someone put on Mingus. Two, three notes into it and Mitchell flipped. I love this!!! Who put this on!!!!!! Outside some guitar players were brutalizing Red House, and inside Mitch Mitchell is hovering over the phonograph, hearing nothing but Mingus. Yeah, alright. They can't live forever.
Brick

Brick Wahl's where to jazz it up for the wk. selections are available on-line.

Anyone knowing of apartments available w/in the City of Los Angeles is probably affiliated w/ a landlord of some kind & deserves to be shot. (And you're getting off easily, at that, parasite on the ass of humanity!)
Nonetheless, the head cheese of this web log seeks a cheap (inexpensive, not crummy) place w/in said City of LA that will accept a mental patient (the quiet depressed type, not a trouble-making paranoid schizophrenic who'll chop you up in your evil landlord sleep) w/ a Section Eight housing voucher & a regular gov't. hand-out income. And a cat. Please leave all the personal contact information in the comments section, so the psycho-/socio-paths who visit here can visit you on-line as well. Thanks!!
P. S.: Not a joke, just lame & desperate.

Can't remember who said it, but Mitch Mitchell's stickwork was once described as sounding like Elvin Jones'. As such, Mitch & his sticks were a vital part of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, now completely over w/ Mr. Mitchell's death today at 61, in Portland, Oregon.
Seriously, imagine the Experience w/ a totally square, 2/4 kind of a cat drumming. Uh-uh.
Mitch's legal first name: John. On the right in the photo of The Experience.

This is fun & easy!! Merely visit ClownHall.com & click on the CARTOONS button. The rabid right, revealed in all its visual glory. And vicious ugliness. Garrghh. Here's some real humour! Ha ha!! The kinds of things that are really bothering the ClownHall "reader" (besides, of course, young people on his lawn): Contractors that don't show up as promised. A silver lining to the new tight economy. It'll keep the tradesmen in line, for once.Here we note one of the first rules of political cartooning. If you have to identify your caricature w/ a label, lapel pin or the like, you suck, illustration-wise!! We think the problem here may be that the cartoonist is confusing Sweet Sarah w/ Saint Ronnie of Alzheimer's. Note the upper right panel, especially. (Of course, in the lower right panel the implication is that Gov. Moosedroppings will be shooting her various enemies as if they were moose or caribou. Try it, witch!!)

Election Day this reporter was discussing presidential pervosity w/ someone (ordinarily well-informed) who hadn't heard Honest Abe might have been "that way." We didn't want go onto any icky details, & didn't remember any of them anyway. But in that synergistic, synchronistic Internet way, what should come before our eyes but a link to a NYT review of almost four yrs. ago concerning the book that started this most recent go-round of implication.
Talk about providing a public service!

Gee willikers, we thought that Sarah Palin really was a reformer. (Didn't she say so herself, over & over & over & over & over &...) Looks as if election reform in Alaska was not one of her "reforms." You might think another reform would be to make Alaskans understand that a convicted criminal may not be their best representative in Washington, but that may not be part of the Palin plan for world domination.
Well, excuse the living fuck out of us. Now that we've read the story it appears that this goes on in the largest state all the time, because it's so large. (We're such a trusting soul, we are often fooled by the inflammatory headlines written by liberal media elitists.) Couldn't Gov. P. put "First Dude" Todd on his snow machine & have him drive around gathering ballots?

It happens every time. Someone to the left of Attila the Hun is merely elected to "leadership of the Free World" (Yeah, we're laughing bitterly as well.) & gun & ammo sales go through the roof. Then the crazies get loose.

Investigators found weapons, several flags and six Klan robes at the campsite, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said in a news release.
Strain said the woman, whose identity was not released, was recruited over the Internet to participate in the ritual and then return to her home state to find other members for the white supremacist group.
But Strain said the group's leader, Raymond "Chuck" Foster, 44, shot and killed the woman Sunday after a fight broke out when she tried to leave. Foster was charged with second-degree murder and is being held without bond.

A well regulated militia, composed of sane people, should be armed to shoot life's losers like "Chuck" Foster as if they were rabid dogs in the street. For the sake of the gene pool, if not one's own safety.

"The IQ level of this group is not impressive, to be kind," Strain said, adding, "I can't imagine anyone feeling endangered or at risk by any one of these kooks."

Yes, but someone seems to have been endangered & at risk. Now she's dead. Good riddance, possibly, but...

The Reformist view is articulated most fully by books, such as “Comeback” by David Frum and “Grand New Party” by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, as well as the various writings of people like Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin, Jim Manzi, Rod Dreher, Peggy Noonan and, at the moderate edge, me.

In short, the Republican Party will probably veer right in the years ahead, and suffer more defeats. Then, finally, some new Reformist donors and organizers will emerge. They will build new institutions, new structures and new ideas, and the cycle of conservative ascendance will begin again.

We find it sad to contemplate the potential return of rightist parties & organizations, but not as sad as contemplating the continual cycle of repressive fascism, occasionally alleviated by a brief moment of true progress, but soon enough stomped in the face again, over & over, like Orwell's boot. Is the human species too stupid to put an end to this cycle of stupidity?
On the other hand, warts. And Jonah Goldberg. Who hasn't typed anything worth excerpting, except to note that he name checks many of the same clowns Brooks did.

For the young Turks and their older allies -- my National Review colleagues Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin and David Frum, the Atlantic's Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, New York Times columnist David Brooks et al [sic] -- the problem is that Bush botched the GOP's shot at real reform.

To imagine that Bush ever desired to do anything but increase the power of the presidency (Cheney's idea, of course, but it played right into Bushie-Boy's hands.) & the wealth of his cronies is beyond the usual stupid level of Jonah.
P. S.: Note the number of "funny names" involved in the "young Turks/Refomist" movement. Not a "real" American in that bunch, is there? Even w/ Brooks & Peggy Noonan, that's limey (at best) ancestry & an Irishwoman.
WHO TAUGHT THESE PEOPLE W/ THE FUNNY NAMES TO LOVE AMERICA? If we can ask that about Barack Obama, we can certainly ask it of someone named "Ramesh Ponnuru." Who were his parents? Where was he born? We can't make any more mistakes w/ unreal Americans, if you know what we mean.

Not all doom & gloom on the horizon for the prez-elect. Sure, we're all about to be walking around in barrels (Where the fug would one even get a wooden keg like that these days?) & fighting each other for the wealthy elite's Mickey D leftovers & grease soaked wrappers, but on the foreign policy front it could be worse, according to Fred Kaplan in Slate. We give you the most hopeful part, hopeful because breaking the military-industrial complex is something Americans can accomplish by themselves, w/o relying on untrustworthy, erratic, confused foreigners.

Military spending. According to a story by Bryan Bender in the Boston Globe, the Defense Business Board, a senior advisory group appointed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, recommended huge cuts in the military budget, noting that the current level of spending on weapons is "unsustainable." Several private and congressional defense analysts have been making this point for a few years now; the U.S. Government Accountability Office recently calculated that the Pentagon's 95 largest weapons systems have accumulated cost overruns amounting to $300 billion (that's just the overruns, not the total cost, which amounts to many hundreds of billions more). It's also clear, from the Pentagon's own budget analyses, that well over half of the $700 billion-plus budget has little if anything to do with the threats the United States faces now or in the foreseeable future. The past seven years have been a free-for-all for the nation's military contractors and service chiefs; the number of canceled weapons projects can be counted on one hand; they've otherwise received nearly all the money for everything they've asked for. Even many of the beneficiaries realize that the binge is coming to an end; the nation simply can't afford it. Obama's fortune is that he can order the cuts, invoking not his own preferences but the sober-minded urgings of a business advisory group in the Bush administration.

A final, hearsay blast at G. W. Bush, from the comments relating to this editorial illustration.

rikoshayrabbit says:
My neighbor down the road used to watch W jump off the high dive, directly atop unsuspecting little kids, in the pool at the Midland County Country Club. He was about 13 years old at the time, and her thoughts were that this boy has absolutely no insides, like there was no one home. She says he is the exact same evil creep now as he was then. This is the little sh!t who allowed his evil to spread across the globe the past eight years and who hired equally evil bastards who would allow his deeds to go unpunished. My neighbor regrets not drowning him, if she only knew then what she knows now.

Hearsay or not, to us, the above is one of those deals so bizarre that one couldn't make it up.

Most conservatives were preoccupied in this campaign with cultural issues: flag pins, 1960s radicals and the like. These issues are legitimate, and certainly easier to understand than the details of health policy.*[...]
By the end of the campaign, 60 percent of voters did not think that [McCain] was “in touch with people like them” — and 79 percent of them voted against him. They thought other Republicans were out of touch, too. To recover, the party will have to prove them wrong, not just return to the conservative program of yesteryear.

The perception that John Sidney etc. was "out of touch" is directly proportional to the perception that conservatives are more worried about imaginary commies from the '6os than people's livelihoods.
*Conservatives should consider themselves fortunate that the details of the McCain "Campaign Pledge to Tax Employer-Provided Health Insurance Policies of 2008" weren't more widely understood.

E-Z 4 U

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